Radio.com Minimation: Robert Plant Recalls How ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Was Written

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (animated for Radio.com by Max Werkmeister)

By Brian Ives

On Minimation, Radio.com combs through the archives of legendary New York radio station WNEW-FM and animates interviews with legendary rock artists. In this installment, Robert Plant explains how he and Jimmy Page wrote Led Zeppelin‘s “Stairway to Heaven.”

Ah, “Stairway to Heaven.” The prime jewel in the classic rock crown. For decades, it’s topped radio station polls as the greatest song of all time. Regardless of that subjective honor, it has been played on the radio millions of times in the decades since it made it’s debut on Zeppelin IV in 1971.

Jimmy Page loves the song; he performed an instrumental version of it on his solo tour in the ’80s, and may well bring it back again if he indeed tours next year. Robert Plant, on the other hand, isn’t such a fan of the song, having only performed it on rare occasions since Zep’s demise, and even paid a radio station to not play the song.

But in this interview, Plant fondly looks back on writing “Stairway” with Page.